“Drawing from an album, view of the fortifications to the south of Porto Mediceo in Leghorn (Livorno) seen from the lighthouse; left, fortezza di Porta Murata, the separating Fosso Reale and to the right the lazaretto of San Rocco; plain with scattered houses and mountains beyond. Pen and black ink, with watercolour“

While it is true that the image seems quite simplistic and not very realistic, its importance lies in the fact that it was drawn in 1746, exactly when the perimeter wall of the cemetery was erected thanks to the bequest made by merchant Robert Bateman in 1743; so this is the earliest image of the new configuration and the earliest artistic depiction of the cemetery I have been able to find in over 20 years of research.

The official description of the image continues as follows: “From an album of drawings (1867,1012.1-52) made by Alexander Cozens during his visit to Italy c.1746. A note formerly attached to the cover of the album (now mounted separately, 1867,1012.1*) describes the subsequent history of the drawings: ‘Alexander Cozens, in London, Author of these Drawings, lost them & many more, in Germany by their dropping from his Saddle when he was riding in his way from Rome to England, in the year 1746. / John Cozens his Son being at Florence in the year 1776 purchaced them. / When he arrived at London in the year 1779 he delivered the Drawings to his Father.‘ The volume is recorded in the Keeper’s report to the Trustees, October 1867: “From Mrs Smith 10.10.0 [pounds] a volume of 51 pen sketches by A. Cozens. Mentioned by Leslie and Redgrave (A Century of Painters, 1866, I, pp. 377-8) in their respective wks’.”

There are some remarkable connections linking the author of this drawing, Alexander Cozens (1717-1786), his son John Robert (1752-1797), Livorno and the cemetery which I’d like to point out:

Henry Charles William Tremamondo (1756-1835), known as Henry Angelo, son of the Livornese fencing master Angelo Domenico Maria Tremamondo (1717-1802), known as Domenico Angelo, writes in his The reminiscences of Henry Angelo:

“Alexander Cozens was teacher at Eton whilst I was a scholar there. He and my father were coeval professors of their respective arts at this college, and were intimate.”, and also: “…Among these were several of the best works of Cozens, mostly scenes in Italy. Both father and son travelled for the purposes of study from England to that classic region of landscape, and the son stored his portfolios with subjects, which he was appointed to execute for several noblemen and gentlemen, who had travelled thither. The late Lord Warwick, Mr. Richard Payne Knight, and Mr. Beckford were his patrons…”. The “Mr. Beckford” was William Thomas Beckford (1760-1844), the author of the gothic novel Vathek, with whom John Robert Cozens travelled through Italy in 1782-1783, almost forty years after his father did.

So we have the author of this drawing, Alexander Cozens – friend of the Livornese Domenico Angelo, and of William Thomas Beckford with whom his son John Robert would travel through Italy – who visited Livorno in 1746 drawing, among other things, the Old English Cemetery, the same cemetery where, in 1788, 1791 and 1795, three women of the Beckford family would be buried, including the lover of Beckford, Louisa Pitt, her mother Penelope Atkyns, and her daughter Louisa Beckford.

UPDATE: As my contact Andrew Moberly pointed out after the release of this article, I forgot to include another important series of connections: the sister of Alexander Cozens, Sarah, was the grandmother of George Moberley (1803-1895), Bishop of Salisbury, who married Mary Ann Crokat (1812-1890); her mother, sisters, aunt, uncle and other family members were all buried in this cemetery in the 19th. century.

All these connections serve to underline, once again, the important role played by Livorno in the lives of these prominent families over several decades, connections which unravel as a result of the close scrutiny that comes with this kind of research.

This contribution of mine is a simple transcription of a primary source useful for finding the names of merchants with business and family interests in Livorno. The printed booklet is available online on the platform ECCO (Eighteenth Century Collections Online) and its full title is: “The answer of the merchants-petitioners, and Trustees for the Factory at Legorn, To The Account of Damages, Laid to the charge of The Great Duke of Toscany, by Sir Alexander Rigby, Mr. Will. Shepard, and Mr. Will. Plowman: Together with Their reply, and The Merchants-Petitioners Second answer thereto. As also Divers Original Papers and Proofs; Deliver’d in Writing to Sir John Cooke, Judge Advocate, and John Pollexfen, Esq; The Delegates appointed by Her Majesty’s Special Command, to Hear what the Petitioners had to say; and to make Their Report thereupon. With several other Matters and Papers since come to Hand from Legorn.“, printed in 1704 in London. Unfortunately the ECCO platform is only available to selected Universities and libraries worldwide and not to the general public or freelance researchers like me, so when I had a chance to access it, I fully transcribed the following three parts which reveal the names of the people I am interested in:

1 – A transcript of the names of the Merchants in London trading to Legorn, who subscribed the Petition delivered in at the Cabinet-Council the 11th of January, 1703/4. [Vide Petition, p.4.]

_____

2 – A Transcript of the names subscribed to the Petition from Exeter, which was delivered to the Right Honourable the Earl of Nottingham the 14th of March 1704. [Vide Petition, p.11.]

_____

3 – Transcript of the names subscribed to the Petition of the Merchants in London trading to Legorn, &c. Deliver’d to Her Majesty 30th March 1704 [Vide the Petition, p.12.]

Many of these merchants often used to travel to Livorno or had family connections there as their local agents, hence the significance of these lists. I have been researching some of these people as part of my ongoing Leghorn Merchant Networks Project, but many more are still somewhat mysterious and are waiting for light to be shed upon them. If you happen to have information on any of them backed by primary sources please let me know and participate in my project.

*** this paper was updated after the initial publication, see at the bottom.

The Van Houbraken family is a line of flemish painters from Antwerp who emigrated to Sicily around the 1620s-1630s and then to Livorno, in Tuscany, in the second half of the 17th century.

Jan (or Johannes) Van Houbraken (1612-1676?), disciple of Peter Paul Rubens and Matthias Stom, emigrated to Messina with his son Ettore (or Hector), another painter whose works are often confused with those of his father. In Messina Ettore had several children with a local woman named Giuseppa Maffei, daughter of architect Nicola Francesco Maffei, some of whom we can identify through the Church registers of Livorno, as the family emigrated there in 1674.

Giuseppa Maffei died on 15 November 1717 aged 76 years old and was buried in the Madonna church, Ettore himself died and was buried in the “Stimmate” church on 21 November 1722 aged 98 years old.

Of his children, three can be traced, as I mentioned above, through the church registers of Livorno:

• Maria, who died on 16 January 1745 aged 92 years old and was buried in the church of the Misericordia.
• Niccolò, who died on 25 December 1724 aged 64 years old and was buried in the “Stimmate” church.
• Placido, who died on 9 October 1684 aged 14 years old and was buried in the Madonna church.

Focusing on the most famous of them, Niccolò, the painter, I could find his marriage record and also the records of 12 children.

Niccolò Van Houbraken married Caterina Valsisi on 12 July 1702 at the Collegiata church, witnessed by Carlo son of Giuseppe Batacchi and Pietro son of Francesco Sardi. It appears that they adopted a Turkish child named Giuseppe Maria who died aged 7 years old on 31 March 1704 after having been baptized earlier.

Their other 11 children were as follows (all records are from the Collegiata church):

• Stefano (1703-1704) †
• Stefano (27.7.1704 – 29.6.1722) †
• Maria Teresa (16.8.1706 – 24.2.1765) married, with descendants in the Sorbi, Pieri, De Bonis, and Canon families.
• Carlo Francesco (30.3.1709 – 27.4.1710) †
• Angiola Isabella Reparata (17.1.1711 – ?) uncertain fate
• Maria (20.9.1711 – 20.9.1711) †
• Paolo Francesco (16.10.1712 – 27.1.1742) twin
• Pietro Felice (16.10.1712 – 3.11.1712) twin †
• Maria Elisabetta (8.9.1713 – 6.7.1714) twin †
• Pietro Giuseppe (8.9.1713 – ?) twin, uncertain fate
• Agostino (27.8.1718 – 29.4.1770), uncertain if he married or not.

A little background information on Niccolò’s wife, Caterina Valsisi: she was baptized on 12 Nov. 1676 and died on 17 Jan. 1732, daughter of Leonardo Valsisi and Teodora Bicci. Her brother was the famous printer/editor Jacopo Valsisi (8.12.1670 – 15.11.1746).

*** UPDATE

After publishing this small contribution I have been asked to add some information on one of Niccolò’s daughters, Maria Teresa (1706-1765).

Maria Teresa Van Houbraken married on 6 February 1736 at the Collegiata Church with Lorenzo Giuseppe Michele Sorbi, an insurance broker. Together they had at least 7 children:

• Luigi Gaetano, born 28 June 1738
• Anna Maria Costanza, born 22 March 1741, married Pieri
• Chiara Giulia, born 19 May 1743, died 19 December 1822 . married De Bonis
• Rosa Angelina, born 8 June 1744
• Cassandra (uncertain) married Canon
• Giuseppe Santi Martino (uncertain)
• Caterina (dates undetermined) married De Bonis

Of these, Chiara Giulia and Caterina married two De Bonis brothers, Filippo (in 1771) and Giuseppe Baldassarre (in 1768). As much as it would be quite extraordinary to find a connection with the local painter Vincenzo De Bonis, this is not the case: Vincenzo De Bonis, in fact, was born in 1786 in a family from Camaiore while the two De Bonis brothers were born in a family from Valletta, Malta, originally named De Bono.

Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour (1810-1861)

In Italy, notwithstanding a profound religious culture, cemetery studies are a very understudied subject if one compares what other countries are doing. This is one of the main reasons for which, when analyzing Livorno’s cemeteries and their archives, the potential for discoveries is definitely high as very few researchers have studied many of their aspects in depth; this is also one of the reasons which fueled my curiosity and engagement in this research spanning almost two decades.

I was recently filling some missing data from an interesting register at the AEG (Archives d’Etat de Genève) regarding the baptisms and marriages of Citizens and Bourgeois of Geneva occurring abroad. While scrolling for information of interest to include in my database, I found a reference to the marriage between the famous art collector and Genevan politician Jean De Sellon (1736-1810) and Anne Marie Susanne Victoire Montz (born in 1754), daughter of the great Parisian banker Jacques Montz. Their marriage was celebrated on July 19th, 1772 in Tournai, in the Walloon Church of the Dutch garrison and duly noted in the register on December of the same year.

AEG, E.C. Registres Divers 2

It is well known that Jean and Anne Marie De Sellon were the parents of three daughters and a son: Jeanne Victoire De Clermont-Tonnerre (widow Blancardi-Roero de La Turbie), Adelaide-Suzanne Benso di Cavour, Henriette Douhet d’Auzers and Jean Jacques De Sellon (who was to become a famous author, philanthropist, art collector and pacifist). In particular Adelaide Suzanne De Sellon married Count Michele Benso di Cavour in 1805, to later become the mother of Camillo Benso di Cavour in 1810.

Jean De Sellon spent a few years in Italy with his wife and their young children, first in Rome and Naples in 1790, then in Florence from 1792 to 1794, in the Villa La Mattonaia, property of the Ginori family. Every source I have read mentions their departure from Florence in the summer of 1794 and the subsequent return to Geneva, where Jean would die in 1810; strangely enough, no apparent mention of his wife’s destiny or date of death can be found.

Villa La Mattonaia in Florence (by Sailko, wikipedia)

Now, how is that possible that such a very well known woman, wife, mother and grandmother, just disappeared from the radar without any trace?
Family religion and location are the keys, in my opinion: they were protestants and  staying in Italy. Add to this a few elements like the fact that when Michele Benso di Cavour married into the De Sellon family, his mother-in-law was already dead, and that the diary of Adèle De Sellon, their daughter and future mother of Cavour, seems to have remained an unpublished manuscript, only recently re-discovered and in the custody of the Soprintendenza di Torino.

A few years ago I had digitalized and included in an electronic database all the information included in an important set of manuscripts belonging to the Dutch-German Congregation of Livorno. That’s when I discovered the death and burial certificate of “Anna Maria Susanna Vittoria, Contessa De Sellon”.

ACOA, Register I of Baptisms, Marriages and Burials (1773-1808), c.158

At that time I had yet to establish the link between this certificate and the whole family structure of this individual. This document can now be said wih certainty to be the burial certificate of the grand-mother of Camillo Benso di Cavour.

This entry demonstrates that on May 1st, 1794, Anna Maria Susanna Vittoria Montz, Countess De Sellon, was buried in the old “Dutch Garden” (Il Giardino Olandese, in Italian) of Livorno by the then chaplain Johann Paul Schulthesius, after her death in Florence on April 29th.

Drawing showing the entrance and wall of the Old Dutch-German Cemetery of Livorno around 1683-1686 (ACDF, St. St. M4 – b, ins. 2, cc. n. n., see references)

In that year the Dutch-German Congregation still had, as we said, their old cemetery (which was opened to burials in 1695), situated along the present Via Garibaldi, in an area called “Il Gigante”. This burial ground was closed in 1839-40, as were all the ancient national cemeteries of Livorno that were at that time going to be included in the new city walls. When the area was finally dismantled and sold, only a few of the very old slabs were transferred to the new cemetery along Via Mastacchi together with the bones of the dead, which were placed in an ossuary in the 1930s. The ossuary, surmounted by a small hexagonal temple, is still standing in the center of the new Dutch-German cemetery and three marble slabs list the individuals whose bones were transferred there with the contribution of the Swiss Society of Livorno.

The Ossuary of the Dutch-German cemetery (by Etienne (Li), wikipedia)

The first slab contains the names of the oldest dead from about 1700 to 1794 and here we can read, towards the end, the name “Anna Maria Sus. Vitt. De Sellon”, confirming that the bones of the maternal grandmother of Count Cavour were indeed re-buried  there.

Everything seems to fit the official story-line of the De Sellon family: they were staying in Florence, where they had rented the Villa Mattonaia from the Ginori family. In the spring of 1794 Anne Marie Montz, wife of Jean De Sellon and future grandmother of Count Cavour, died and as they were protestants and no proper burial ground existed in Florence, she was most probably embalmed and transported to Livorno, where Rev. Schulthesius took care of issuing her death certificate and proceeded with her burial. The De Sellons then left Florence during that summer to go back to Geneva. Between 1804 and 1813 all their children married (including Adèle, Cavour’s mother, in 1805) and in 1810 Jean De Sellon died there. Cavour himself was born in 1810, so while he knew his aunts and his uncle Jean Jacques, he never met his maternal grandparents. We do not know if he was aware of his grandmother’s burial place or if he ever came to visit her grave, but it can now be said with certainty that she was buried in Livorno’s old Dutch-German cemetery, “Il Giardino”.

References:
AEG: Archives d’Etat de Genève, Geneva, Switzerland.
ACDF: Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede, Vatican City.
ACOA: Archivio della Congregazione Olandese-Alemanna, Livorno.
NSL: Nuovi Studi Livornesi, specifically: Stefano Villani, Alcune note sulle recinzioni dei cimiteri acattolici livornesi, in NSL XI (2004), pp.35-51.

Mr. H. whose identity will be revealed later.

H. suffered from a pulmonary ailment, and during the autumn of 1816, having been advised to winter in a warmer climate, he travelled to Pisa (Italy) with his brother L. The great italian poet Ugo Foscolo, who briefly met H. at Holland House, wrote two letters of presentation to assist him during his trip to Italy, calling him “the most eminent speaker of the Parliament”.

L. the brother of Mr. H.

The two brothers arrived in Pisa in November 1816 and took their residence in the Casa Cioni, Lungarno n. 727. Some weeks passed, and though the health of Mr. H. did not improve, his morale definitely did. During this period he made the acquaintance of several people in Pisa, among whom Major Langton and the family of Jessie Allen, later wife of the economist Jean Charles Sismondi. Towards the beginning of January his friend John Allen, being quite worried about the health of Mr. H., requested some advice from the physicians Baillie and Warren, who had visited Mr. H. a few weeks before his departure to Italy. He wrote him, telling him not to worry because his illness did not seem dangerous, just inconvenient, and the situation would improve as his strength would return. The physicians, nonetheless, recommended a dose of mercury pill and some carbonate of potassa. Mr. H. reported these instructions to Dr. Andrea Vaccà, a very well known physician in Pisa who seemed to be “very much in the dark” about the case but accepted to follow Mr. H.’s condition by paying him almost daily visits. At the end of January Dr. Vaccà witnessed the death of Francis North, the Earl of Guildford, a man well known to Mr. H. H. was very touched by this death, as he was then staying  in the same city of Pisa. Lord Guildford was buried, two days later, in the Old English Cemetery of Livorno. The opium therapy that Mr. H tried under the auspices of Dr. Vaccà seemed to have some very positive effects as he declared many times in his letters between the end of January and the first days of February 1817. Dr. Polidori, Byron’s personal physician, also attended him during this period in which he felt a recovery to be possible.

Unfortunately, these were all illusions: two days after he wrote his last letter to his father (on Feb. 4th, 1817), the difficulty of breathing and the cough reappeared with some severity. Dr. Vaccà, called by Mr. H.’s brother L., came at seven in the morning on Saturday, February 8th, and QUOTE found his patient labouring greatly in his breathing, with strong palpitations of the heart, and a low, intermittent, and irregular pulse; his forehead [was] covered with a cold sweat, and his face and hands [were] of leaden colour. He was, however, perfectly sensible, and spoke in [a] clear, distinct manner; expressing neither apprehension nor anxiety about himself. Various stimulating applications were tried, but they afforded no relief; the difficulty of breathing gradually increasing. L., Mr. H.’s brother, had entire confidence in the skills of Dr. Vaccà but requested, towards the afternoon, that there might be a consultation with another physician. They came together soon after four o’clock and L. received them in the adjoining room, leaving Mr. H. alone about ten minutes. On drawing aside the curtain, after having returned to the bedroom, he found his face deadly pale, his eyes fixed, and his hand cold; for a few moments he flattered himself that he had only fainted from weakness; but the sad reality was soon revealed: his brother Francis had just been taken away forever. END QUOTE?

This is how the last days and hours of Mr. H.’s life were described by his brother Leonard; Francis Horner, our Mr. H., died on February 8th, 1817 in Pisa. He was only 38 years old.

Dr. Andrea Vaccà Berlinghieri

Dr. Vaccà requested permission to to examine the body and conduct an autopsy, which Leonard granted. Here’s the full report of Dr. Vaccà in french:

Résultat de la section du cadavre du feu M. François Horner.

Son corps n’était pas très maigre, et sa peau, surtout celle de la face, avait une teinte plombée; aux extremités des doigts elle était noire.
L’ouverture du bas ventre fit voir tous les viscères et organes contenus dans cette cavité parfaitement sains; on remarqua seulement le systême veneux gorgé de sang.
La section de la poitrine laissa voir les poumons singulièrement rapetissés, et particulièrement le poumon droit. Leur couleur était livide, et leur superficie très inégale: cette inégalité naissait d’un très grand nombre de corps blancs, transparens, de forme et de volume très inégal; les plus petits étaient comme des lentilles, les plus gros comme des amandes. De ces corps on en a voy ait beaucoup à la face antérieure des poumons, peu à la face postérieure. Ces corps étaient de petits véscicules remplis d’air; sous la compression elles reparaissaient, si on poussait de l’air dans la trachée-artère. Ces vessies n’avaient aucune communication avec le tissu cellulaire, qui unit les cellules aériennes entre elles, de manière qu’il ne s’agissait pas d’emphysème, mais de dilatation morbifique des cellules aëriennes.
Une grande partie de la substance pulmonaire, et spécialement la partie postérieure de ces organes était condensée, durcie, et, dans beaucoup de points, entièrement hépatisée. Les lobes des poumons n’étaient pas adhérents entre eux; il n’y avait pas d’adhérences entre les poumons et la pleure. Les glandes lymphatiques des bronches étaient plus volumineuses qu’à l’ordinaire, la membrane des bronches légèrement engorgée.
Le pericarde était sain; entre cette membrane et le coeur il y avait une petite quantité de sérosité. Le coeur était extrêmement flasque, et se laissait facilement déchirer par les doigts. L’oreillette droite était très dilatée, et remplie de sang. Le ventricule correspondant avait des parois très amincies, et c’était spécialement dans les parois de ce ventricule que l’on pouvait rémarquer le peu de ténacité de la substance musculaire que nous avons noté plus haut. Ce ventricule était rempli d’une substance blanche, assez compacte, fibreuse, fortement adhérente aux colonnes musculaires du ventricule. Cette substance était probablement de la lymphe plastique, formée dans les derniers moments de la vie.
Les deux autres cavités du coeur ne présentèrent rien de particulier.
Baillie (Anatomie Pathologique, ch. iv. sect. vi. et suiv.) et Lieutaud (Historia Antomica-Medica) rapportent quelques exemples d’affections pathologiques, qui ont des rapports avec celle que nous avons décrite; mais je n’en trouve pas une, où l’on ait remarqué dans le même individu le rapétissement des poumons, la dilatation d’une partie des cellules aëriennes, l’hépatisation d’une grande partie des poumons, et l’affection du coeur.

Docteur Vaccà Berlinghieri
Pise, le 12 février, 1817.

Some observations on the report by Vaccà were made by Dr. Pelham Warren a month later:

“Remarks by Dr. Pelham Warren on the above, in a Letter to John Allen, Esquire”

31, Lower Brook Street, 5th March, 1817.

Dear Sir,
I have shown Vaccà’s account to Dr. Baillie, who considers the case as exhibiting a very unusual form of disease, and one which is evidently out of the reach of medicine. The state of the heart presented no unusual appearances; the flaccidity and tender structure of its fibres being met with very frequently in individuals whose constitutional powers have failed by slow decay: the appearance within the right ventricle was a coagulum of blood, not uncommonly found in that situation after death. The condensation of the lung is also not unfrequently met with, and justifies the opinion which Dr. Baillie held to you of such an alteration of structure being the probable cause of Mr. Horner’s difficulty of breathing, which was never attributed to water in the chest, but to an obstruction of the circulation of the blood through the lungs arising from some cause not easily distinguishable. The enlargement of the air cells to the extent mentioned by Dr. Vaccà is a disorder so rare, that there are only three instances to be found in the anatomical collections with which Dr. Baillie is acquainted. The immediate cause of death appears to have been owing to the increase of the obstruction of the lungs to such an extent, as to have presented the free passage of the blood through the branches of the pulmonary artery, by which the right side of the heart became gradually gorged with blood, and its action was slowly suspended.
Yours faithfully,
Pelham Warren.

Dr. Pelham Warren

Francis’ brother Leonard revealed in his journals that “he derived the greatest comfort”, upon this trying occasion, “from the more than friendly attentions of Mrs. Drewe (the sister of Lady Mackintosh), her daughters, and the Miss Allens, her sisters, who had come to Pisa on a similar melancholy errand. They did not leave the last duties to their departed friend to be performed by strangers; and they stood by my side, when I laid the mortal remains of my dear brother in his grave, in the Protestant cemetery at Leghorn.”.

It is possible to read the other side of the story from one letter written by Jessie Allen to her future husband Jean Charles Sismondi, dated from Pisa, February 10th, 1817:

Jessie Allen, later Mrs. Sismondi

I write to you to day a few lines only, & those very painful ones. It is to tell you that Mr. Horner died on Saturday the 8th at four o’Clock. On Friday he aired out, & was nearly as well as he had been for some time, perhaps a little more difficulty in breathing. He passed rather an unquiet night, & at 7 in the morning appeared so unwell his brother sent for Dr Vaccha [sic]. He found him with a cold sweat on his forehead, his face lead colour, & with great difficulty of breathing. He applied blisters & cataplasms ineffectually: he grew worse. Other Physicians were called in, & while they were on a consultation, he died. His body was opened this morning; the Physicians seemed puzzled to account for his immediate death, the cause of his disease was an organic defect in the formation of his lungs. The difficulty of breathing had affected his heart which was become spongy, so that you could pass your finger through it; his lungs were covered with white bladders, which on being dilated swelled to the size of small grapes & were nearly as thick – Dr Vaccha [sic] has met with no similar case, & pronounces it impossible to have saved his life beyond a few months; – his body is taken to day to Leghorn, & is to be buried on Wednesday in the ground appropriated to the English; his brother is gone there this morning to chuse the spot & have it railed in – I am glad he has something to occupy him. I never saw a man so entirely overpowered with grief as he was at first, to day he is a little more composed – we brought him here immediately, & have at least the consolation of softening his sorrow – he departs for England almost immediately & I have a great hope Mr Polidori will go with him –
Mr Horner was sensible to the last, but I do not know that he was aware of his immediate danger. We saw him the Wednesday previous, & thought he appeared so much better we were full of hope.
Will you have the goodness to see Mr Elmsly immediately & tell him had I known his direction, I would have written to him myself, but Mr L. Horner is gone to Leghorn & will not return before the post goes out; he will inform Mr Horner’s other friends at Rome; (Mr Elmsly I mean). Mr Leonard is quite incapable of writing on the subject yet.
I have passed this morning in assisting Caroline in preparing his body for the grave, you may imagine then, I have not to write further. I say nothing of the loss, it is beyond all words […]

In another letter to Mrs. Sismondi, the mother of Jean Charles, Jessie tells that she and Emma put Horner’s body in a coffin and accompanied him to the boat that would have carried him to Livorno, along the Navicelli canal. The next day the Allen sisters went to Livorno to assist to the funeral rites performed by the reverend Thomas Hall, chaplain of the British community at Livorno. Of this event we have the arid and brief words of the entry in the chaplaincy register written by Hall:
“Francis Horner Esq., a member of the British Parliament, died at Pisa on the 8^th of February 1817 and was buried on the 11^th following in the English burial-ground at Leghorn, by me – Thomas Hall”

The spot of the burial, chosen by the brother Leonard, was located near the south-east wall of the cemetery, not far from the grave of  Thomas Sebastian Hall, a son of the Rev. Hall who died a year and a half earlier, and right next to the spot where the same Rev. Hall would be buried seven years later. This coincidence is not the only one related to this burial, as we will see.

Within a few days or weeks the mould covering the remains of Francis Horner was protected with a simple marble slab with the following inscription:

“Here lie the remains of Francis Horner, member of the British Parliament. He died at Pisa the 8^th of February 1817, aged 38.”

The above inscription was cited in a typescript transcription of a journal, that contains a short note of a visit  to the Old English Cemetery of Livorno. The passage gives us an extraordinary snapshot of the grave of Horner at a moment, between 1817 and 1820, when his final monument had not yet been erected (I have already cited this journal here). The still anonymous author, together with a number of other people (Dr. Peebles, Lady Belmore, Miss Caldwell and the two Miss Swinnerton) seemed to know Francis Horner and his acquaintances in Pisa: “…we paid a tribute of respect to the mould which covers the remains of Francis Horner. His monument has not yet been erected, but a simple marble slab protects his revered dust in the meanwhile”. The author also sketched a drawing of the area (unfortunately not included in the typescript I examined) specifying that “the stone on the left covers the grave of two sisters [in reality a sister and a brother], Frances [sic] and Louisa Jane Drewe […] who died […] the 19th of March, and […] the 10th May, 1817. Both […] had attended Mr. Horner’s funeral.”

Francis and Louisa Jane Drewe were two of the children of Caroline Allen, a sister of Jessie, and died respectively at 14 and 17 years of age. Their grave is still next to Horner’s. It appears, however, improbable that they were able to attend the funeral since they were both already ill at the time.

From Leonard Horner’s journals we know that their father decided to order a marble monument for his son’s grave in Livorno which was designed by Sir Henry Charles Englefield, the English antiquary and scientist. The same Sir Englefield was also the author of the iscription destined for the marble statue of Francis Horner ordered in 1817 from Sir Francis Chantrey and placed in Westminster Abbey in 1823.

Sir Francis Leggatt Chantrey, self-portrait

Chantrey, Horner’s Monument in Westminster’s Abbey

In June 1818 Chantrey received as well an order for a medallion portrait of Horner, to be placed on the monument at Livorno; this sculpture was completed at the end of October 1820 and presented to Leonard Horner free of charge. At this time, we can suppose the monument in Livorno to have been completed and waiting for the medallion to be placed on the side facing the central part of the cemetery.

A drawing included in the Memoirs (1843) allows us to  have a contemporary glance at the area:

Between the 1820s and the 1850s several travellers witnessed the same monument, including the medallion portrait:

Katharine M. Lyell, Memoir of Leonard Horner, F.R.S., F.G.S.: Consisting of Letters to His Family and from Some of his Friends, Cambridge University Press, 2011, 186.

From Dr. Marcet – Florence, 5th March 1821.

MY DEAR HORNER,  – I wrote to you a few weeks ago, and expressed my regret at having missed the opportunity of visiting your brother’s tomb. If it were necessary to show that I was sincere in my regret, I could not produce a better proof than the excursion I have just made from Pisa (where I was induced to take a trip) to Leghorn for that purpose. I can now tell you what I think of the monument. It is truly touching by its good taste and simplicity. It would have been so easy to adorn it with this or that symbol of public services, or to swell the iscription with ostentatious titles to public gratitude! The structure has sufficient mass to catch the eye; but in the detail it can only be noticed by the total absence of pretension or laboured embellishment – By the eloquent simplicity of the inscription, and by the great likeness of the medallion. My companion made me remark that the form of the tomb might have been more elegant if the base had been somewhat larger than the superstructure, so as to resemble less a regular square, but I cannot say that the circumstance would have struck me, or that I am quite satisfied with the truth of the criticism. Mr. Martin of Leghorn (Alex Prevost’s brother-in-law) was so good as to procure for me a little sketch of the tomb, which, however slightly done, will serve to give you an idea of its appearance. It is probable that you have already procured drawings of this kind, but in that case, it may be acceptable to some of the family, and at all events you will, not scold me for having ventured to inclose it in my letter.

George Combe, The life and correspondence of Andrew Combe, 1850, 89.

There is […] an English cemetery here, containing many handsome monuments. Among others, that of Mr. Horner interested me greatly. He died, as you know, at Pisa, in 1817, still a young man. There is a bust of him. His head is among the best I have ever seen. The organs of the intellectual faculties are very large; those of the moral sentiments are beautifully developed; and the organs of Language are large.

Piero Sraffa, M. H. Dobb, The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, 10, 1955, 321-322.

Letter, Thursday 24 Oct.r Pisa [1822]

(…) We also saw the English Burying Ground in which we were very much interested. It is full of very handsome monuments […] but that which mostly attracted our attention was Francis Horners, who died here at Pisa and was buried there. It was raised by his father and is very handsome. There is a Basso Relievo of the deceased upon it which is I think like him. The inscription on one side is in English and on the other in Latin – it describes, and I believe justly, his talents and virtues and states that the monument was erected by his father.

Incredibly, we have another witness of the grave in the 1860s. Leonard Horner hadn’t visited his brother’s grave for nearly 45 years when he came back to the Old English Cemetery of Livorno in October 1861:

We have been to Leghorn, a train took us there in half-an-hour. We found my dear brother’s monument almost hid by bushes around it, the inscription on both sides scarcely to be seen. I have given directions for all these to be removed, and a low railing to be placed round the monument. The letters of the inscriptions which are cut in the marble, are scarcely legible, so I said that I should like them to be touched with black paint, but Susan suggested that they should be gilt, and that I have directed to be done. The space between the foot of the monument and the rail will be planted with flowers, and I shall make an arrangement that will secure its being at all times in order. The medallion is in perfect preservation. It is by far the most beautiful monument in the cemetery; it was designed by Sir Henry Englefield. To perform this duty to the memory of my brother has been a source of great comfort to me.

A few months later he came back to check the condition of the grave:

Yesterday Joanna and I went to Leghorn, my chief object was to see the repairs of my brother’s monument, which I had ordered six months before. I found all quite to my mind, the shrubs that hid it have been removed, an iron railing placed round it, the marble cleaned, and the letters of the inscription gilded. I trust that those who are to come after me, will not allow it to be neglected. No more burials are now in this cemetery, and the Committee of the English Church are having it put in complete order.

Unfortunately the wish of Leonard Horner was not to be respected for long, as the World War II bombings of Livorno in 1943 severely damaged the cemetery, including the area of Horner’s tomb, as this 1947 picture of a close-by spot demonstrates:

The tomb was not destroyed, however, but the upper cover was partly damaged and the plants that grew inside the then uncovered monument did the rest. In the following images it is possible to see the condition of the grave in 1987 and 2012:

Francis Horner’s monument in 1987 and 2012

During the terrible period of WWII, the cemetery was not only damaged by bombs but also plundered by people searching for iron, marble and wood to be sold. It was probably for these reasons that Professors Yarrington and Sicca, who citing this grave in their works but not finding the medallion where it should be, believed it lost or stolen.

Front side of Horner’s grave with the missing medallion portrait

In 2012 the members of the association “Livorno delle Nazioni”, during their voluntary cleaning work at the cemetery (begun in 2009), found the “lost” medallion portrait in the vicinity of Horner’s monument and successfully identified it. Immediately contacts were made with Dr. Sicca and Yarrington who confirmed the authenticity of the sculpture and a complex process was then started with the Soprintendenza di Pisa,  the Misericordia of Livorno, and the British Consulate General in Milan, to secure and transfer the work to the Fattori Museum of Livorno. A conference was held on May 17th, 2013 to announce the finding to the public and the press.

It is with great pleasure that I can show the medallion portrait, commissioned by Leonard Horner and made by Sir Francis Chantrey between 1818 and 1820, for the grave of the admired Francis Horner:

The above picture represents the medallion portrait in the condition in which it was found, without any restoration besides some basic removal of the dirt and plants that were covering it.

We now hope that some charity or modern Maeceanas may find the story of this tomb and its medallion of interest and allow it to be restored and returned to the monument.

Sources:

ODNB, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online version.
Memoirs and Correspondence of Francis Horner, M.P., by Leonard Horner, London, 1843
Memoir of Leonard Horner, by Katherine M Lyell (1890) (privately printed)
Toscana cosmopolita del primo Ottocento, da un carteggio inedito di Jessie Allen con Jean Charles Sismondi, Livorno, Debatte, 2006.
The Lustrous Trade: Material Culture and the History of Sculpture in England and Italy, c.1700-c.1860, edited by Cinzia Maria Sicca and Alison Yarrington, p.145

For reference:
The Guardian, Italians unveil long-lost tomb medallion of Scottish MP, by Lizzy Davies
The Telegraph, Long-lost plaque commemorating MP found in Livorno’s Old English Cemetery, by Nick Squires
LivornoNow, Revealed! Francis Chantrey’s funerary sculpture for Francis Horner’s tomb in the Old English Cemetery of Livorno, by Sarah Thompson

I’m pleased to announce the completion of the indexing process of the non-catholic civil registers of Livorno (1818-1865)!

The work took really a long time (almost a year) and a great effort but is now complete in its 15898 single entries that represent a total of 3628 family names. I believe that the registers for which these indexes were made are of the greatest importance for Livorno but also for a much larger audience given the fact that so many non-catholics were living in Livorno, coming from all over the world. Additionally these records include, and are composed mainly of, Jewish people. As everyone is aware of the importance of the Jewish community of Livorno, these records can depict the family networks of all these people for a period just short of 50 years across the 19th century.

If you didn’t follow the other posts about this subject, please take a few moments to read the introduction to these records. On the same page you will find the links to access the indexes. ( EzVN8HdtkCV5rZrTWIbp )

The Livorno’s Non-Catholic Civil Marriages’ Index (1818-1865) has been completed in the past few days; after the initial release of several sections, it is now fully published online. The index is comprised of 3288 single entries, representing 1644 different marriages, and a little over 1000 different family names.

Some more information on this source can be found here (also accessible from the blog homepage), otherwise you can  directly access the

Marriages’ Index.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 17,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 4 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.